nly
place where we can be where there are lights at night and where we can
get to see the fellows and write a letter. We stay there for an hour
or two and tramp back through this ---- (censored) mud to our billets."

And of all the lights o' war one must know that the lights of the Y. M.
C. A. huts cast their beams not only into the hearts of these lads but
across the world, and sometimes I think across the eternities, for in
these huts innumerable lads are seeing the light that never was on land
or sea, and are finding the light that lights the way to Home. And
these are the lights o' war.

XIII

SILHOUETTES OF SUNSHINE

There is laughter and song and sunshine among our boys in France. Let
every mother and father be sure of that. Your boys are always lonely
for home and for you, but they are not depressed, and they are there to
stay until the job is done. There are times of unutterable loneliness,
but usually they are a buoyant, happy, human crowd of American boys.

Those of us who have lived with them, slept with them, eaten with them,
come back with no sense of gloom or depression. I say to you that the
most buoyant, happy, hopeful, confident crowd of men in the wide world
is the American army in France. If you could see them back of the
lines, even within sound of the guns, playing a game of ball; if you
could see them putting on a minstrel show in a Y. M. C. A. hotel in
Paris; if you could see a team of white boys playing a team of negro
boys; if you could see a whole regiment go in swimming; if you could
see them in a track meet, you would know that, in spite of war, they
are living normal lives, with just about the same proportion of
sunshine and sorrow as they find at home, with the sunshine dominant.

Some Silhouettes of Sunshine gleam against the background of war like
scintillating diamonds and

"Send a thrill of laughter through the framework
of your heart;
And warm your inner being 'til the tear drops
want to start."

There was that watch-trading incident on the Toul line.

The Americans had only been there a week, but it hadn't taken them long
to get acquainted with the French soldiers. About all the two
watch-trading Americans knew of French was "Oui! Oui!" and they used
this every minute.

The American soldiers had a four-dollar Ingersoll watch, and this
illuminated time-piece had caught the eye of the French soldier. He,
in turn, had an expensive, jewelled